A blog by Vitessesteve mostly about Triumph car stuff. Featuring articles about Standard Triumph car dealers. Includes new free technical literature such as Parts Catalogues, Workshop Manuals and Owners Handbooks.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Transmission failure - not mine

I have read a tale on: http://www.justdrive.ca/gt6/ which reminded of a not dissimilar incident that befell my Vitesse some years ago. So sent poor Andre an email.

Sorry to read of your news.

I had the bell housing fail on my Vitesse at speed some years ago. The gearbox started to come through the transmission tunnel. (Fortunately into the passenger foot well.) I was pushing the car hard at least 4500rpm in overdrive top!

I guess that the bell house broke first which left the gearbox attached to the prop. Being attached to the prop rather than the bell housing the gearbox broke through the tunnel. The continuing motion of the car pulled the prop off the end of the gearbox, the UJ jokes were smashed. There was a hell of a lot of noise. Fortunately the road was empty and I was able to pull the car up straight.

At the time it was a very unusal event for nobody in the West Midland Triumph community in the UK had ever seen such a thing. The recovery driver told me how lucky I was that the prop runs above the chassis at the transmission as he remembered picking up the remains of an old Ford where the prop had dropped and dug into the road!